I've got hours of basketweave ahead of me still on Autumn Leaves, which I know must be as boring for you to watch as it is for me to stitch, so we'll take a little detour into rock slab jewelry land, shall we?
What you see above is the stuff I pulled out of my stash once I found the perfect rock at the local bead store. The threads are all Splendor silk, in the dark copper S850 and the lighter golden/tan of S839, plus the dark teal S1114. I also grabbed some Kreinik metallic in the copper 027 (size #16 medium braid) and a spool of Accentuate metallic in a similar copper 026. I may change my mind later (we are making this up as we go along, you know) but those are the colors I started with. They resemble the colors in my crazy lace agate.
Now, we have to come up with a design. My scrap of canvas looks to be 18 count and it is in the shape of a triangle, about 4 inches long on the short sides and probably 6 inches on the long side. So I have about a 2 inch by 2 inch space to fill with my rock and some pattern.
What to do, what to do? Well, when in doubt you know what I do--I cheat! This time cheating took the form of looking at my rock. I decided it would be easy to copy the shapes on my rock in stithes. I could plop the rock down on the canvas somewhere, either in the middle or off to either side, and surround it with patterns.
Let's look at my rock. The side I bought it for has a pretty agate swirl that has various layers of color, plus a few round or oval dots of various colors. The rock itself is roughly round with a hole drilled through the middle from one end to the other. I'll be able to attach it to the canvas with a thread quite easily. Neva glues hers but I was shopping at a bead shop, the closest thing I have to a rock shop anywhere near me. Then I turned the rock over and here's what I saw--
Doesn't that look like the head of a dragon to you?
I think we have our design motif!
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